[CentOS] problem with poppassd

Wed Aug 22 14:42:26 UTC 2007
Steve Rigler <srigler at marathonoil.com>

On Wed, 2007-08-22 at 17:23 +0300, mailadmin at baladia.gov.kw wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I have recently installed CentOS 5 and is workin perfect
> 
> i recently download n installed poppassd daemon ver 1.6a so as to let the
> users to change their password
> but when i try to change password i get the folling error
> 
> 500 'BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word'
> 
> i tried googlin arround and tried to play with
> system-auth-ac file in /etc/pam.d but no use

I know nothing about poppassd, but the message you are getting is
probably coming from pam_cracklib.  Among other things it will check:

     1. If your password is based on a dictionary word.
     2. If you password is a palindrome.
     3. Similarity of your new password to the previous one.
     4. If your password is a reverse of the previous password.
     5. etc, etc.

Most of these options are non-configurable.  Using longer passwords
seems to suppress some of the rejections.  If you don't care about
enforcing password complexity look here to disable it:

http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_44_6065.shtm

Otherwise try using a stronger password.

-Steve